


Auld Lang Syne

by Tashilover



Category: Elementary (TV), Slender Man Mythos
Genre: Horror, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-23
Updated: 2013-08-23
Packaged: 2017-12-24 10:01:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/938626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tashilover/pseuds/Tashilover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Old acquaintances should never be forgotten.</p><p> </p><p>A slenderman fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Auld Lang Syne

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think I'm going to stop until I've incorporated slenderman into allllll of my fandoms. =)

When Joan was a little girl, her grandmother used to pull her and her siblings aside and say, "Don't go into the woods, little ones, otherwise the wendigo will get you."

Which, really, didn't make much sense. They lived in an apartment building on the sixth floor in the middle of  _Baltimore_. Joan was more likely to be run over by a car going too fast around a corner.

Her mother told Joan her grandmother was just old, not in her right mind, and wanted the grandkids not to forget the stories of their ancestry. Joan found the whole thing silly but dutifully kept her mouth shut whenever she saw her grandmother do strange things.

During the New Year, her grandmother used to scatter mountain ash on the floor near the front door. She would  _scream_  whenever somebody dared clean it up, and would scatter more ash immediately if she found it gone.

Every full moon she would bless the sidewalk of their apartment building with holy water. Joan used to tease her, asking her if she was warding off vampires. Her grandmother would chuckle goodheartedly and simply say, "It's to keep the wendigo away."

It was always the wendigo. Never vampire or ghost or werewolf or troll. Always the wendigo.

When Joan turned thirteen, her grandmother suffered a horrific stroke and was left mute and nearly paralyzed. It was the first New Years they didn't have mountain ash scattered across their front door.

On January 2nd, Joan and her brother entered their grandmother's room to help her into her wheelchair and bring her into the kitchen for breakfast. As Joan gently held onto her grandmother's hand while her brother maneuvered her body, Joan noticed something very strange.

Her grandmother was missing her ring finger.

Not the entire finger, just down to the first knuckle, but it was gone. It couldn't have been chopped off because the stump was clean and covered in skin. It was like her grandmother lost the finger in her youth and long since healed. Had her grandmother always been missing this finger and Joan never noticed it before till now?

Grandmama couldn't give any answer. Her face was just as expressionless since the day of the stroke.

Just in case, Joan counted the rest of her grandmother's fingers. Excluding the stump, there was nine in all, definately.

The next day, there were only eight fingers.

Joan, now officially scared and confused, brought the subject up to her mother. Her mother couldn't explain it. Her father couldn't explain it. They theorize Grandmama must be hurting herself in the night somehow and perhaps it was best if they checked her into the hospital for monitoring.

Joan couldn't explain it, but she swore granmama was silently begging them not to leave her. Joan knew it was impossible, the stroke had taken so much away, but it was the way her grandmother  _looked_. It was heartbreaking.

"It's only for a little while," Joan promised. She had reached over and patted Grandmama's hand, trying not to grimace at the feel of the stump of her fingers.

That next day, Grandmama disappeared from the hospital. All that was left behind on her hospital bed were her remaining fingers.

That was over fifteen years ago and to this day, Joan continued to line her front door with mountain ash, and she continued to bless the front steps with holy water. When people asked, she would tell them it was to honor her grandmother. In reality, she did it to keep out the wendigo.

 

 

 

Sherlock said nothing while he watched Joan poured out a line of mountain ash across the floor at their front door. He sat there on the steps, eating a large bowl of cereal. Once the line was secured, Joan straightened, felt satisfaction in her work, and moved to place the mountain ash away.

Sherlock stood, still munching on his cereal, and with one socked foot, dragged a toe across the ash line, breaking it.

"Sherlock!" Joan hissed. "Stop that!"

"I didn't think you were so superstitious, Watson," Sherlock said as Joan repaired the line. "It's an unbecoming trait."

"It's tradition, you twat," Joan told him. "Now leave it be until tomorrow."

Sherlock made a face but he didn't bother the ash line again. "What's next? Shall we start with human sacrifices? Animal sacrifices? Shall we dance naked under the moonlight and pray to the stars?"

"Don't you already dance naked under the moonlight?"

"That was  _one time_ , Watson. It was an experiment."

"Sure it was."

He scowled at her. He walked back to his study, aggresively shoveling cereal into his mouth.

Joan giggled lightly at him, then stared down at her handiwork, feeling really good. Now that was over and done with, Joan pulled on her coat. It was time for her to get a gallon of water purified by a priest so she may cleanse the front steps of the Brownstone. "Sherlock, I'm going out, is there anything you need?"

"NO."

He sounded like a child. "Okay," Joan said. Very carefully she opened the front door as not to disturb the ash line. She stepped over it easily. "I'm leaving!"

 

 

 

 

By the time Joan came back to the Brownstone with a gallon of purified water, it was nearly three in the afternoon. It shouldn't have taken her so long, but during the New Years, the city became alive with activity. More than once Joan chose to sit down at a cafe, to drink tea and eat lovely, fluffy cake.

In one hand she carried the gallon of water, her fingers aching because of it. In the other she carried a plastic bag full of little sweets, little gifts she had gotten for Sherlock. Maybe the little chocolate cake will make him feel better.

Carefully she opened the front door slowly. It was a little difficult to do so, with both of her hands occupied. She poked her head in, to see how much more room she could give herself so not to touch the ash line.

The line was gone.

Joan gasped. She pushed the door opened widely, tossing down the gallon, her purse and the sweet bag into the nearest chair. She bent down, ran a finger across the floor. Not a trace of it was left. Sherlock must have vaccumed it up.

A cold sweat broke out down Joan's back. She thought of her grandmother, thought of her severed fingers and the horror in her eyes the day before she went missing.

Suddenly this house too small, too quiet.

"Sherlock...?" Joan said out loud.

There was noise, like a table and chair being knocked over. She heard a door being opened violently on the second floor and Sherlock suddenly came running out. "Watson!" He yelled out almost hysterically. There was blood running down his head. "Watson! Get out of here!"

"Wha-?" Joan took three worried steps up the stairs to meet Sherlock halfway. There was an odd sound to her right, at the living room, and Joan turned her head to see.

At first all she saw was suit and tie. From her angle, she could not see the man's head, just his torso. Immedaitely her eyes squinted, trying to comprehend what she was seeing.

The torso was thin.  _Too thin,_  it was as if the trunk of his body had no internal organs, no bones, no muscles to shape it. His arms were long too, almost pole-like. Not even his suit could keep up with his arms, revealing pale skin, bony wrists, and brittle looking fingers.

Then the man bent down, gazing up at Joan. At least he would have... if he had a face.

Sherlock grabbed Joan by the arms and started hauling her up the stairs. "Watson, move,  _move_!"

Joan ran with him, too afraid to look back.

Once they got to Sherlock's room, he slammed the door shut, and started piling furniture back against the wood.

"Sherlock," Joan demanded. "Did you remove the mountain ash? Did you?"

"I vacuumed it up!" He said, pushing a dresser drawer against the door. "I wanted to prove your superstitious nonsense was silly!"

As much as Joan wanted to say,  _I fucking told you so_ , she could do that later. "Where is it now? The vacuum?"

Sherlock stepped away from the door. He was breathing hard. "In your room."

Immediately Joan moved forward and started undoing the barricade. "Watson!" Sherlock yelled out. He tried to keep her away. "No, it's safer here!"

"This is not going to stop him, Sherlock!" Joan spat, tossing aside a chair and a small television with ease. "We need that mountain ash! Now help me!"

He did, grimacing as he pulled back the dresser again. "What the fuck is that thing?"

"Later, c'mon, quickly!"

Once they were able to open the door wide enough for them to step through, they ran down the hall. The tall man was already at the top of the stairs and reached out to them, fingers missing them by a mere inch.

The vacuum was not in Joan's room, but sitting right in front of her door, as if Sherlock wanted to mock her even further by displaying it so blatantly. Joan grabbed the vacuum, ripped out the container and kicked opened her door. "Get in, get in!"

They moved into her room and Joan quickly poured the contents of the container across the floor, making a barrier of ash, dust, and collected hair. Once it was done, Joan looked up.

The faceless man was staring straight at her, close enough to touch.

Sherlock moved Joan back, pushing her behind him. He was gasping and shaking like a leaf, but he stood tall. "Can't believe all that stands between us and certain death is a line of magical ash," he murmured. "God, I hate irony."

The tall thin man had not moved.

"Do you have your phone?" Sherlock hissed.

Joan nearly opened her mouth to say yes, then remembered. "It's in my purse. My purse is downstairs."

"I took a picture of  _him_  on my phone. It burst into flames," Sherlock said. He gave a little hysterical giggle. He sobered quickly. "What is that thing, Watson?"

Joan wanted to close the door so badly. She couldn't, not without breaking the ash line. "I don't know," she said, feeling sick. Why couldn't she tear her eyes away from it? "My grandmother called it a wendigo."

"Can we kill it?"

The moment Sherlock suggested killing it, the tall man cocked his head suddenly. There was a scraping noise, like fingernails being drawn down the walls, but the tall man's arms were motionless. Only his head moved.

"I don't know," said Joan. "We may-"

" _Let me in, Joanie_."

Joan nearly gasped. That sounded like her grandmother.

"Who said that?" Sherlock demanded, directing the question to the tall man.

" _I did_ ," said the voice again. The tall man took a step back, bringing his arm down into view. He held something in the palm of his hand.

It was a human head.

Joan sucked in a harsh breath. "Grandmama..."

Her Grandmother's eyelids were opened but there were no eyes. There was also no blood, no veins or bone to see, just an neverending blackness. Grandmama was smiling, her teeth brown and black and smelling of rot. " _Joanie_..." The head cooed. " _Please let me in, I want to hold you in my arms again_."

The tall man held out his other arm, as if wanting to embrace.

Sherlock physically turned Joan around, allowing her to face her wall rather than the talking dead head of her grandmother.

" _Joanie_..."

Joan covered her ears.

" _You fucking_ _ **cunt**_ _. Don't think you've outsmarted me, bitch. I got your grandmother and one day I'll get you too. It's only a matter of time, Joanie. One year you're going to forget the ash again. One year your children or your grandchildren is going to remove the ash and I'll **eat**  you, whole and screaming, like gran-gran._"

Immediately Sherlock dug around underneath Joan's bed and pulled out her portable CD player. Joan's been meaning about getting rid that thing for years, but never got around to it. Sherlock checked for a CD inside, turned the volume on high and shoved the earplugs on Joan.

Even through Madonna's singing, Joan could still hear the muffled dark threats being spoken from her grandmother's mouth. The talking soon stopped.

And that's when the screaming started.

Just  _screaming_. No words being said, just loud and piercing, never once stopping to take breath. Sherlock turned the volume on even higher. Joan feared for her eardrums.

Sherlock merely endured the whole thing in a stoic grimace.

 

 

 

 

At midnight, Sherlock took away the earplugs.

In the darkness, Joan saw him say something to her. She had to shake her head at him, pointing to her ears. After listening to  _Like a Virgin_  about six hundred times with the volume on high, Joan at this point was temporarily deaf. It'll probably be hours before she'll regain normal hearing. She may have ruined her hearing forever.

Sherlock pointed to the door. The tall man was gone.

Though Joan knew the wendigo only came once a year, neither Joan or Sherlock moved from their spot. It was probably best to wait till the sun rose again, ensuring them of the new day, of the new year.


End file.
